Not much commentary needed here. These speak for themselves in the main.
This story is critical of the kind of brain-washing, the kind of creation of blind followers, that religion causes…that most religion causes. (Many references to blind following in “authority/obedience model religions”).
And if you’re willing to settle, out of fear, for any kind of garbage, whether it’s the fundamentalist Islamic kind, the fundamentalist Christian kind, the George Bush variety, the Osama Bin Laden variety, the Adolf Hitler variety, the Mussolini variety, the Genghis Khan variety—that’s your fault. If you are willing to listen to someone’s lies, and not examine it for yourself, [unintelligible] transformation model ideas, accept nothing you cannot decide for yourself, accept nothing you cannot prove for yourself, yes, and rely on nothing outside yourself, if you simply take somebody else’s word for it, then you are very much responsible for that….The number one criticism of the transformation model of the authority/obedience model is this: that the authority/obedience model turns people into pod people, turns people into blind, believing robots, who not only do not question themselves, but they do not question their masters, they do not question life. They are people who are basically cowards. They have allowed their fear to rule over them so much, that they just accept whatever the Pope tells them, or whatever their Christian minister, or their priest tells them, or their imam tells them, or their Hindu priest, or whomever is telling them that. They don’t try to live life at the front lines. They let someone else taste for them.
Dr. Carter shows not the slightest familiarity with a major portion of Christian theology and paints with a brush so broad that the results are predictably inaccurate and prejudiced.
It’s a very interesting question to ask: Gee, why is it, that the Western religions, Christianity being the most murderous religion by far, by far, and second Islam, being the second most murderous religion in history…
Of course, a little closer examination of the facts of history would show that the majority of those murdered by “Christians” were…Christians, because Rome is being lumped in without any recognition that most of those she murdered were Christians. And of course, all of this ignores how communism in a single century put all religions to shame in the murder department.
In fact, that’s the primary concern about where the Third World War is going to come from, between the Christian fundamentalists and the Muslim fundamentalists. Because the Christian fundamentalists are scarey from my point of view because they want Armageddon. They want atomic warfare. Their ready for the end of the world. They want to be jumped up into heaven so that they can laugh at all the rest of us scumbags who are going to be down here suffering. And they are arrogant enough to believe that’s going to happen. And if you’re arrogant enough to believe that’s going to happen, then you are arrogant enough to try to elect a President who is going to bring it on—and I do mean bring it on. You remember the phrase “bring it on”? Yes? That’s scarey stuff, that’s quite scarey stuff, at least from my point of view it is.
I suppose there might be a nutball or two out there looking to help Armageddon along by voting for George Bush, but I get a very, very strong feeling that Dr. Carter is just a tad bit lacking in his knowledge of the variety of eschatological viewpoints expressed in Christian scholarship. Only a few weeks ago I recall my fellow elder saying in the Sunday morning sermon, “Therefore, if we take this text in its historical context, there is no such thing as a coming Battle of Armageddon.” I guess that entire spectrum of biblical interpretation doesn’t fit into Carter’s definitions of Christianity. Or, if he does actually know something about such things, we have another example of “let’s not show Christianity enough respect to actually tell the truth about the situation.” And since I heard him earlier in the lecture correctly differentiate between the Sunni and Shiite uses of “imam” (though he then later incorrectly said the Qur’an says the Bible is full of errors), he surely knows how to show enough concern to make proper distinctions. He just doesn’t want to do so when it comes to the primary objects of his disdain.
And so we press on….
